


nightmare by a rocking cradle

by scarecrowes



Category: Boardwalk Empire
Genre: Alternate Universe, Implied Character Death, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-15
Updated: 2012-09-15
Packaged: 2017-11-14 06:14:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/512186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarecrowes/pseuds/scarecrowes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU in which Rothstein's boys are killed to settle Jimmy's debt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	nightmare by a rocking cradle

He’s delivered a gold ring that doesn’t belong to him.   
  
It’s passed to him in an envelope by a fidgeting Mickey Doyle, who bolts from his doorstep the minute he takes the packet’s edge. Jimmy could shoot him as he goes, straight and clean in the back - but he’s too busy resisting the nauseous pull of the part of himself that already knows what this is.   
  
It’s heavy and glinting in the middle, and he’s seen it spun and adjusted a hundred times in meetings, gutted offices in downtown New York, warehouses in the woods. It doesn’t belong on his kitchen table, where he’s set it to stare at it over six redundant cigarettes, half expecting Charlie ( _Sal, whatever the fuck your name is_ ) to storm through the door and reclaim it. Like they’re both the victims of some great cosmic joke.  
  
The ring was wrapped in a tiny fold of butcher paper, bloodless and clean, not a finger to speak of like he might have done it himself - like having Richard scalp a man, sending a message with the purest, savage form of violence. Instead he’s just left with this, a cold piece of jewelry too thick and gaudy to be worn by anyone else, and he wonders if he should go to New York with it himself, or just call Rothstein on the phone.  
  
It's as he climbs lobby steps for the second time in a year that he doesn’t think of countless wives, mothers, fathers who had received telegrams, or uniformed men on their doorsteps; things to tell them about the dead sons whose names he still remembers, here or in smoking in the dark of his kitchen.  
  
Rothstein doesn't even look at him, though. He's at the window, with tightly closed books and an untouched plate left on his desk. The balls on the billard table are racked, and Jimmy nonsensically considers breaking them - but he sets the ring on the table next to the pen the Bankroll left uncapped, knowing it speaks for two.  
  
"Thank you, Mr. Darmody."   
  
There's a starvation in Rothstein's eyes that Jimmy  _knows_ , and it isn't the bland helplessness of mourning.   
  
Jimmy will take his knife to Philadelphia, with Richard in tow; he's killed boys, too, after all, in mud and rain and not the alley behind a downtown casino. He's no stranger to the cold in his own voice, asking Richard to set up across the street from the quiet Pennsylvania apartment that Mrs. Horvitz lives in with her daughter.  
  
Rothstein turns to him again before he leaves, every proposal and promise gone unspoken but for one. There's a twitch to how the man moves, like he's had some piece pulled loose or his veins filled with something that stung, and he adjusts his cuffs like he's conscious of them.   
  
"James?"   
  
There's a violet striped tie draped over the arm of Rothstein's chair, Jimmy notices; too pink-toned to tell if there are stains in it, but it's not something the man would wear himself.   
  
"Make him watch." 


End file.
